My Bondage and My Freedom

My Bondage and My Freedom is an autobiographical narrative written by Frederick Douglass, in 1855.

This is the second autobiography of former slave Frederick Douglass, following the publication of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.

Douglass, through the memories of his childhood and youth, describes all the hypocrisy and human evil that he observed during his time as a slave and how this affected him at all levels of his life.

He details how he understood what it really meant to be a slave and how he had to overcome his environment and improve himself.

"In Talbot county, Eastern Shore, Maryland, near Easton, the county town of that county, there is a small district of country, thinly populated, and remarkable for nothing that I know of more than for the worn-out, sandy, desert-like appearance of its soil, the general dilapidation of its farms and fences, the indigent and spiritless character of its inhabitants, and the prevalence of ague and fever".